


How Far from Fear I Lied

by Miss_M



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, End of the World, F/M, Flash Fic, Insecurity, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-10
Updated: 2013-09-12
Packaged: 2017-12-26 05:48:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/962334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the Wall, Brienne and Jaime’s first and last thoughts are for each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Brienne

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn’t going to write anything really depressing for these two, ever! Yet here we are. The title is from the song “Miles and Miles” by the awesomely awesome Schiller. Spoilers through ADWD. I own nothing but the heartbreak.

_Stranger take me, darkness break me…_ The words go round and round her head. 

Brienne has no words.

She never has. Words were for ladies who wanted kisses and gilded bowers, and for lords who could give them both. 

Brienne always thought herself simpler than that, and more honest. After stumbling through miles and miles of ice and snow, through day after day when the sun barely rose, she realizes this is false. Her desires have always been more complicated, and she ill-equipped to say them, let alone seize them.

She never expected love. When she felt it before, for a man who was kind to her and tolerated her presence, she never thought that he or even her feelings for him could be hers, really hers. It seemed too fantastical. 

It was not, just absurd. She knows that now.

As for the one who came later, who slipped into her heart through the gash left by Renly’s death and never left, well. That _was_ absurd, and fantastical, and impossible. And it had become a part of her. _He_ had become a part of her. She could not dislodge him from her heart. Though she never said or did anything. 

Except save him, and betray him, and save him again, and follow him, and now die for him. 

For years she watched him, and kept silent. He did not belong to her, nor did she expect him to. The words she would require, the courage, the faith, will not come to her now. 

Brienne will not cry. It is too cold for that. 

Jaime thinks he is the only one who can speak, who can dream and make things real, but she never spoke, and yet here they both are. Freezing or wights, death will be real. 

She hopes for wights. She was made to be a retainer, not a leader like Jaime. She will gladly die in battle, following him still, and maybe do some good thereby. 

She considers praying, offering whatever she has left. Her life, her bruised soul, her scraps of honor, her lonely, untouched, ice-solid love. She sets no worth by any of it, and lays little faith in the gods any more. Why should they listen to her, when she would see the whole world freeze and crack like glass, if only they would let him live. Leave a scrap of warm soil somewhere for him. Give him life and sun, and her the knowledge that her prayers, her sword, her death made it real. She thought herself humble, yet her pride would topple the Wall, it seems.

The horn sounds three times. Not for the first time. 

Brienne crunches through the snow, after the other survivors, a shambling rush to arms. The ditty she heard some children sing on the way North dogs her heavy footsteps. Children’s voices heralding the end of everything. 

_Stranger take me, darkness break me_ , she hums, silent as ever. _Stranger take me, darkness break me._

_Just let him live._


	2. Jaime

_Mother lied, dragons died…_ That bloody song!

Jaime grits his teeth, wishes those brats they had passed on the King’s Road had been too starved and cold to sing, so their little verse heralding the end of the world would not have stayed with him. All the way to the Wall, where it is only a matter of time. 

A voice which sounds exactly like Brienne’s scolds him for wishing children dead just so his tainted conscience would not trouble him. In his head, Jaime replies that it is not the children or their song he finds objectionable, but their abominable singing and their paltry rhymes. Just because the Longest Night is upon them does not mean peasants should forget their place and start competing with minstrels. 

The Brienne before his mind’s eye shakes her head, ice crystals clinging to her short tresses like a diamond crown, her expression fond, familiar and exasperated all at once. His Brienne, with all her facets. 

Except she is not. Not his. Not before, certainly not now. 

She has stayed away since they reached the Night’s Watch, as though the stupid wench thinks their imminent deaths require her to scrape together whatever dignity she has left, after Biter, and Lady Stoneheart, and the name ‘Kingslayer’s whore’ trailing her like a cloak throughout the Seven Kingdoms. 

Jaime has seen too many people die, killed too many himself, to lay any store by a death which is anything other than hideous. Yet the girl keeps her distance, as though he had turned into one of those fabled dragons which died as soon as Winter settled over the land. 

As the slayer of the next-to-last Targaryen ruler, Jaime takes no small, if wry pleasure in that. 

Soon there will be nothing left for Queen Daenerys to call her own. So everyone’s hands will be empty at last, no more thrones or wars to play at, no more elusive lovers. 

Jaime has grown fond of the dream in which Cersei turns into Brienne. Since the wench avoids him, that dream has become his favorite. He just cannot accustom himself to the part toward the end, when Brienne’s blue eyes turn to ice, and she straddles him, white and dead and hungry. 

He has come to relish nighttime battles, so he can hack at wights instead of attempting sleep. At least then Brienne is by his side, and all is well. 

The horn sounds three times. Maybe for the last time. 

Jaime watches the survivors rush to arms, envies them. Like so many green knights at their first tourney. 

He sees Brienne in the crowd jostling in front of the armory. Her tiredness, her lack of faith evident even from a distance. Time was, Jaime could always find the words to make her blush or laugh or scowl. Before. 

_Mother lied, dragons died_ , he hums. 

He goes to where Brienne stands in front of his men, trying to think of words to make the wench laugh one last time.


End file.
